Birds are no Dummies by Scott LaFee - Eureka! on Creators.com

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Birds are no Dummies

It's long been known that the alarm calls of birds serve two purposes: To alert fellow feathered friends to danger and to warn off predators by loudly declaring, "I've seen you. You might as well go away."

Now animal behavior scientists at the University of California Davis say they've discovered a new avian trick: Some birds project their warning calls in one direction while their beak is pointed in another, a ventriloquist-like ability.

"It's like talking out of the corner of their mouths," said Jessica Yorzinski, a graduate student who conducted the research while studying various songbirds, like dark-eyed juncos, yellow-rumped warblers and house finches.

So why do birds talk sideways? It appears not to be a case of misdirection by throwing their voices. Rather, in some cases birds may see better sideways than forward, said Yorzinski. An alarm focused at a predator to the side may be more effective because the bird can also keep a better eye on the predator at the same time.

And how do the birds do it? That's something researchers have yet to figure out.

PRIME NUMBERS

3.6 — Estimated amount of information, in zettabytes, that American households collectively consumed on a daily basis in 2008. A zettabyte is one billion trillion bytes or a 1 followed by 21 zeros. It's been estimated that if every word ever spoken by humans was recorded and stored, it would require 42 zettabytes of memory.

Source: UCSD's Global Information Industry Center report "How Much Information?"; Mark Liberman

BRAIN SWEAT

Balance a broom horizontally on your finger so that your finger is exactly on the broom's center of gravity, mark the spot and cut the broom in two. You now have a long piece consisting of most of the handle and a shorter piece containing the bristle end and part of the handle.

If you weighed both pieces, what would happen?

a) The short piece would weigh more

b) The long piece would weigh more

c) Both pieces would weigh the same

d) Your mom would find out and whack you with both pieces

'TRUE FACTS'

The Big Dipper just got a little bigger.

Astronomers have detected a new (but invisible to the naked eye) star in the constellation. The red dwarf, dubbed Alcor B, orbits a larger companion star called Alcor A, one of the stars forming the bend in the ladle's handle. While Alcor B is much smaller than Alcor A, it's still roughly 250 times the mass of Jupiter.

BRAIN SWEAT ANSWER

a) The short piece would weigh more. This is due to the torque needed to hold the long piece up. It's the same reason a heavy kid has to sit closer in on a seesaw than his opposite, lighter friend. For some people, answer d may also be correct.

QUIRKS OF NATURE

Beyond melting sea ice, polar bears face another threat: mercury pollution. University of Michigan scientists say new research indicates the bears are amassing high concentrations of the contaminant (produced by human-generated sources like coal-burning power plants) because they are apex predators.

Plankton and algae initially absorb methylmercury released into the environment. They are eaten by larger creatures, such as fish, which are then consumed by seals, which are then eaten by polar bears. At each level, methylmercury concentrations increase, with the bears being the end of the line. Perhaps literally, since mercury is toxic.

WHAT IS IT? ANSWER

A new species of orchid, discovered by botanist Lou Jost in the Cerro Candelaria nature reserve in Ecuador. The flowers of the orchid, part of the Platystele genus, are the smallest in the world, just 2.1 millimeters wide or about the thickness of two nickels. The flower's transparent petals are only one cell thick.

VERBATIM

What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue.

— Mark Post of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands on attempts to create "artificial meat" from pig cells

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